Ex-Nazi camp guard deported by US dies in Germany

Palij, an ethnic Ukrainian born in a part of Poland that is now in Ukraine, entered the U.S. in 1949 under the Displaced Persons Act, a law meant to help refugees from postwar Europe. Jakiw Palij, a former Nazi concentration camp guard who lived an unassuming life in New York City for decades until his past was revealed and he was deported to Germany last year, has died, German media reported Thursday. He was 95. The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung and Westfaelische Nachrichten newspapers independently quoted German officials saying Palij died Wednesday in a care home in the town of Ahlen. U.S. Ambassador Richard Grenell, who lobbied for Germany to take Palij, said he had been informed of the death. He credited U.S. President Donald Trump with seeing through Palij’s August 2018 deportation after it had been stalled for a quarter-century. “It would have been upsetting to many Americans if he had died in the U.S in what many viewed as a comfortable escape,” Grenell told The Associated Press. Palij was the last Nazi facing deportation from the United States when he was taken from his Queens home on a stretcher and put on a plane to Germany. “An evil man has passed away. That, I guess, is a positive,” said Rabbi Zev Meir Friedman, who had led protests at Palij’s home. Dov Hikind, a longtime New York lawmaker who fought for Palij’s deportation, said the death brings “the closure survivors of the Holocaust needed.”